You are reading the blog of a dangerous man. A very dangerous man. Or so the Israeli pro-war propaganda machine believes. That’s why yesterday, an Israeli Facebook user named Tal Inbar began a campaign to get my Facebook account removed. Here is what he published in Hebrew:

Translation: Come let’s talk for a moment about Richard Silverstein. This anti-Israel Jewish is a compulsive writer who devotes his time battering everything related to Israel, through disseminating sickening and appalling lies. Right now, he’s promoting his story that the IDF “murdered a soldier” in order to prevent his kidnapping [sic] by Hamas. We can’t remove the blog by the charlatan from Seattle from the web. But his lies, his calumnies, and abuse of a bereaved family (he publishes the name and picture of the IDF soldier “murdered” by the army) it’s possible and desirable to get him removed from Facebook. Friends, report!

Who is Tal Inbar? The head of the space and drone program at the Fisher Institute, an aerospace project of Israeli Air Force veterans. This is a guy at the heart of Israel’s military-industrial complex. Those who read my blog know that one of my subjects is exposing the deficiencies of Israel’s drone program along with others like Iron Dome. You don’t think there might be an element of payback in this, do you?

The Fisher Institute’s name is now associated with Inbar’s behavior. Clearly, on his Facebook account he notes his affiliation. So while his account may be personal, anything he writes there reflects on the Institute, especially when he engages in an act of fraud like this.

I wouldn’t have known about his campaign if he hadn’t included my name and link to my Facebook account so that I saw the invitation for campaign against me. Needless to say, Inbar and everyone who joined him is engaging in fraud. They’re knowingly reported to Facebook that my account is fake when they know it isn’t. There are probably Israeli Facebook users who’ve used this tactic before against people like me. They know that Facebook will not actually individually examine an account to determine if it is fake. They’ll base the decision to disable on the number of reports they get. If there are enough, it’s automatically disabled.

That’s what happened to me. And it’s a clever strategy. It takes me off Facebook in the middle of the Gaza war. It silences my voice on Facebook. It brings the actual war into the arena of social media. While Von Clausewitz said that war was an expression of politics by other means, this act of fraud is an extension of the Gaza war by other means. Just as much of Israel’s justification for the war is fraudulent, so is this. The problem is that Facebook isn’t aware of the exploitation and manipulation of its procedures by master fraudsters like these.

These pro-war hawks can’t win by legitimate means. Not satisifed to control the media inside Israel, they seek to silence critics outside. This is the opposite of democracy. It’s fascism, Israeli fascism. They know they can’t rebut the truth. So they resort to lies, subterfuge and deception.

The best I can do is expose the fraud and ask Facebook users to do what they can to complain about the way I’ve been victimized by the hasbara apparatus. I would hope there’s a journalist in Israel not cowed by the pro-war hasbara machine to write something about this.

I have appealed the decision to disable my account. I’ve provided personal information that confirms my identity and that it is an account that follows Facebook’s terms. I don’t know how long it will take to reinstate my account. I hope as well, that once reinstated they will restore my account to the exact status it had before it was removed.

This sort of behavior shows that they’ll stop at nothing, they’ll stoop to every trick to advance Israel’s wars and supposed interests. It’s feeble, pathetic and will only backfire upon them. Let’s start making that happen now, shall we?

By the way, the issue that got Inbar into high dudgeon was my report that the IDF killed Sgt. Guy Levy to prevent his capture by Hamas. Inbar thought this story was a calumny. But guess what, it turns out the it’s true as confirmed earlier today by Ronen Bergman. Those “lies” of mine that so upset Inbar? They’re true.

I expect dirty tricks from that crowd but being of an pre Facebook, pre-Internet and, indeed, pre-TV generation I am surprised by the specifics of this one. I have however a vast network of nephews and nieces of the “with it generation” whom I will try to mobilise on your behalf.

But the dirty tricks, Richard, won’t make them win this media war. Those times are gone. Paul Mason, a British journalist and editor of the 4 news channel, explains here why:

Why Israel is losing the social media war on Gaza:

the short answer is because of the immediate reporting of facts by direct witnesses on the ground without editorial sifting and transformation. Also because the younger generation relies on this type of news much more than on official news broadcasts. I add to that,thirdly, because the pro-Israel lobby can’t bully and threaten the spreaders of this kind of news. See:

“Probably the most famous war photograph of all is of Vietnamese girl Phan Thị Kim Phúc lacerated by a US napalm strike in 1972. Audio tapes later released reveal US president Richard Nixon saying to his chief of staff Bob Haldeman, “I’m wondering if that was fixed.” “Could have been,” replies Haldeman.”

It is time at long last for all of us Americans … enablers of the Israeli geoncide of the Palestinains … to stand up on our hind legs and put an end to American support for Israel, and with it an end to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. Time for all of us to do so … especially time for American Jews to do so …

I have no facebook account so I can do nothing to help you along that dimension. None of the social media are any different than the mainstream media in my opinion. In fact, now the internet media are buying the mainstream … cf. the Amazon/CIA/Washington Post triad.

There are just 537 Americans, 546 counting the Supremes, causing all the trouble. That’s not 1%, that’s 0.00017%. If a bona fide 1% of us do stir our stumps we can run these stooges out of town on a rail in one New York minute. No one here but us. It’s time for us to move.

I call for

1. An immediate end to all US military, financial, and diplomatic ‘aid’ – UN vetos – to Israel; the lifting of Israel’s blockade of Gaza by the US 6th Fleet; and the Fleet’s delivery of aid to reconstruct Gaza after the total wars of destruction waged against Gaza and Gazans by Israel.

2. An immediate Israeli pullback – 100% – to the old “Green line” and pre-1967 war borders.

3. Immediate recognition of the state of Palestine by the US, and its puppet UN, within the 1967 borders.

4. The immediate unification of the Palestinian state, by bridge over or, better, tunnel under Israel, to be paid for with some of the moneys formerly earmarked for US ‘aid’ to Israel together with aid from all those worldwide who are in solidarity with Palestine and the Palestinians.

5. A cooling-off period lasting a generation or two – as long as it takes – to allow a real peace between all the people in that poor area to evolve in this one world which we all inhabit together.

Hi Richard, I tried searching for a Facebook mechanism to complain and reinstate your account to no avail. Two things that comes to mind is:
a) start an on-line petition to send to Facebook in disgust; I am sure through the various support groups we will raise sufficient signitures.
b) Adriana’s suggestion; for an interim, we could receive your blog in an email and post it on our respective FB accounts. See https://www.facebook.com/ebbi.shaghouei (I simply cut and pasted your blog in the What’s on your mind? facebook textbox and included a link to your website).
Any thoughts?

Well done Richard, you must be touching a nerve. You are welcome to put posts on our FB page timeline and we can then post them on our page. We have acquired 4000 followers in our first two weeks on FB! https://www.facebook.com/jfjfppage

Richard, I expected this and more. In Israel they are currently conducting a witch-hunt of anyone who posts on their facebooks while saying anything derogatory about IDF “operations”. Ihave seen widely shared posts complaining about some Arab israeli student or another, who dared to express sympathy with the gaza victims on their facebook. they are asking for them to be expelled, to be fired, to be boycotted – that when they are feeling polite. I am glad you are fighting back and will happily lend a hand, where i can. It’s just that when israel is obviously losing the hasbara war we should expect much much worse to come. Yes, they are blaming the internet.

It is the fascist state, the totalitarian militarist state. It is composed of dirty tricks and the truth is the enemy.

Israelis must never know that they are not at risk, that they have wantonly killed, pursued war crimes, for no reason, that their hatred has no real foundation. What did Palestinians do to them that they hate with such ferocity?

Netanyahu spreads racism talking about THEM and US. This is the essence of racism, and Israelis believe it. That’s the incredible thing, these people actually believe that they are better, more decent, more moral than Palestinians (or anyone else for that matter.) How did Israel and Israelis get so utterly repellant?

This is nothing less than a scandal. The Hasbara tentacles attempts to silence any dissenting voices using all the dirty tricks in the world. In a way, it’s a badge of honor, as they are panicking. I suggest creating a new page and have one of the Jewish peace groups add their followers to you. That is until we find a way to restore your original FB page.

This is really useful, as we’ve never been successful in getting others removed (for example the incitement to murder Arabs recently) – we reported this as incitement to racism, to murder, all to no avail. You’ll get your facebook page re-instated, or start a new one in the meantime, but this has told us how we should act (if we’re willing to use such tactics.)
Thanks for all your good work

@ sylvia: You haven’t asked my advice, but I would argue against fraud in conducting ourselves on social media. Even if you get an account closed, it will only be temporary and the allies of the closed account will get so outraged that they’ll redouble their efforts to support the victim (as mine have on FB). Better to argue, provide evidence, engage in democracy. Leave subterfuge & deceit to the hasbara apparatus.

“According to the report published by Barak Ravid in on Tuesday Haaretz, the government wants to invest almost NIS 3 million in deploying hundreds of students to promote its positions on social media networks – but with no governmental identification. The public diplomacy units to be established at the universities will operate under the direction of the public diplomacy staff in the Prime Minister’s Office, but “The entire idea of the setup is based on activity of students and by students,” and therefore, “the idea requires that the state’s role not be highlighted.” ”

This is from Haaretz a year ago. Perhaps a few contributors who have been silent on this page can tell us how things are getting along.

Good to hear your f/b page is re-opened. This harassment and fear mongering is appalling. I hope it stops.
I don’t know much about f/b, but I think they should be concerning themselves with the animal cruelty videos they allow!

This happened recently to Pepe Escobar who writes for Asia Times. Somebody didn’t like his posts either.
I would have preferred it if you had not posted that the Israeli soldier was killed by friendly fire. I’m being euphemistic. Sometimes, things are better left unsaid.